


Breathing of Statues

by Kieron_ODuibhir



Series: Cirque de Triomphe [46]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Adoption, Angst, Courage, Earth-3, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Families of Choice, Fluff, Gen, Guilt, Jason Todd is Red Hood, Jason Todd is a Talon, Mirror Universe, Parent-Child Relationship, Sequel, Trust, and by sequel I mean 'followup to 'Brought to You By The Letter S', communication is key, gothic architecture, it isn't courage if you aren't afraid, meta dramatic irony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-07-29 14:35:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7688203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieron_ODuibhir/pseuds/Kieron_ODuibhir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The search for Jason Todd's real birth mother continues, and the Red Hood knows he should be grateful but it kind of feels like everybody's in a hurry to get rid of him.</p><p>And he knows he didn't deserve to be offered a place with the Circus in the first place, but he doesn't want to go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breathing of Statues

**Author's Note:**

> Jason Todd and his father figures are apparently my favorite thing to write? I would not have called that.
> 
> Edit: Whoops! Story is now in its chronologically correct position.

Jason Todd crouched on the back of a gargoyle. It was one of the impressive ones, a heavy basalt figure that squatted immensely on one edge of the old downtown mansion that was now the Gotham Colonial History Museum, broad stone wings stretching wide.

He'd never been able to decide whether it looked like it was trying to wrap the entire world in its grasp, or preparing to rip itself free of the gnarled old house and fly far, far away. He was careful not to put much weight on the wings; it was amazing they'd survived over a century of Gotham snowfalls as it was, even tilted as they were to sheet some of it off behind. In the heaviest periods of snowfall, the gargoyle would always wind up buried completely, only its snarling face and the hooked tips of its wings poking out of the drift, over the edge of the roof. At least it always had a view.

Oldtown stretched itself out before him like a crazy quilt, wild curves and angles of street lighting up as evening drew in, but Jason wasn't looking at it. Not really.

There had been three women's names starting with _S_ in his father's address book, and whatever reason Shiva had for being one of them, it wasn't that she was his mom. Enigma and Harlequin had proceeded to do their most discrete digging on the other two, and by the end of a week they had all the information they expected to get, at least without scaling up the search to something Owlman would probably notice.

Sharmin Rosen turned out to have emigrated twelve years ago and joined Mossad, which was in its own way nearly as scary as Shiva. Worse, actually. Shiva was part of their community; the Circus didn't have a good record with governments, and as secret service types went Israel's were supposed to be _intense_.

If she _was_ his mom, maybe she could teach him Krav Maga. Focus on the positives, Todd. But don't get your hopes up.

Sheila Haywood, on the other hand, was a doctor who had spent the last seven years working in refugee camps, after some kind of malpractice suit involving a teenage girl who died on her operating table. A late-term abortion, was the scuttlebutt, but J's rumor-mill could only churn up old dirt so fast without risking attention.

Sharmin for her part appeared to have cleaned up her own trail like a highly efficient data-Roomba, and it would take more than casual poking to get anything much on her, besides a friend of J's asking the rabbi at her old temple if he remembered her. (She'd been a very serious young woman and no one had been all that surprised when she emigrated; she'd never married, no mention made of a pregnancy. Unfortunately that didn't rule it out. Can't prove a negative.) Ed did find a photo of Sheila, a headshot from sometime last decade, posed smile that showed off her photogenic qualities to best advantage.

She was pretty, with sharp cheekbones and a jaw just a little too strong for a feminine ideal. Her hair was curlier than Jason's, worn short enough to make loose ringlets without getting in the way, and it was the sort of clean golden blonde that was almost never natural. A shade or so darker than Harley's. Her eyes were green, and Jason realized with a funny lurch in his gut that, judging by the photos in the cardboard box, Willis Todd's blue eyes could easily have mixed with those to get his greeny-blue. The way he'd _thought_ they had with Catherine's hazel.

It wasn't proof or anything, he knew it might actually not be _either_ of them, and even his new dedication to recklessness wasn't enough to make him willing to risk jumping to conclusions, but his instincts were saying _her._

He hated them. Shut up, he snarled at them. You're probably making shit up just because you think moms are smiley blonde doctors now.

It was bad enough he'd managed to get all disappointed about Shiva, after about fifteen minutes' considering the possibility. He _was not_ putting anything into this woman he didn't know.

What was he going to do? He needed to know, and he needed just as much to _not_ contact either of these women, but if he _did_ find his birth mother and she _actually wanted him_ …that was almost worse than reaching out and getting cut dead. What could he do. What should he do. _What was he going to do?_

A step. The sound of someone sliding out through the same ostentatious gable-dormer Jason had used, almost as silent as a Talon, and he spun in his crouch, ready to leap to the attack, heart in his throat the way it never used to be, hand finding the hilt of one of the knives he carried everywhere, ever since the time Owlman had recaptured him.

The breath whooshed out of him at the sight of a cherry-bright grin set in a chalk-white face. Jokester was wearing an anonymous grey windbreaker over a fuschia dress shirt and forest green slacks, and tacky two-toned loafers completely unsuited to climbing around on roofs. Not that J ever seemed to notice that kind of thing, but Harley had long since bullied him into maximizing his survival chances with sensible combat footwear for his costume. These were just clothes.

Jason tore his eyes off J's feet, knowing he'd learned all he could about what the man wanted just by looking, and was just distracting himself now.

"Hey, Junior," said the clown, one hand up palm-first for peace. When Jason looked away instead of returning the greeting, he made one of his little huffs of amusement and began to slide carefully down the slate shingles toward the flat sill between peaks presently occupied by Jason and the winged gargoyle. "Just wanted to make sure you were doing okay; didn't mean to interrupt prime brooding time."

It had been long enough since Talon that Jason knew this wasn't code for checking that he hadn't gone on a murder spree, after getting steadily more pissy for a day and then skulking off alone, but his chest still felt dry and hollow. "Whatever," he mumbled.

Jokester reached the flat stone between roof-peaks, found his footing, and chuckled.

And Jason felt the dry paper inside his ribs catch fire, drew back his teeth and let out a snarl that just fell short of being a shout. "Don't _laugh_ at me!"

The clown blinked, pulled himself back so his right foot had to brace against the slope of the roof instead of holding him up from below, and Jason immediately felt like scum. Not as bad as he felt when he got mad at Harley, but.

He _knew_ J didn't laugh to make him feel small. He _had_ laughter that diminished—jibes and taunts and sniggers meant to strip the menace from the Owl and reduce him to just a man in a stupid outfit, jeers that made enforcers lose their heads with frustration and do something stupid, chortles of disbelief that had punctured the self-righteousness of some of the more annoying politicos to take a microphone in Gotham.

(He had never managed to laugh Talon any less, because when you stripped everything away from Talon he was just _a child who could not die with a bloody knife in his clawed hands_ , and that was what made him terrible. Except even that he had stripped away, too, somehow, and left just _Jason_ , shivering, bare, like a clam without its shell.)

This wasn't that. J laughed at _everything_ ; coincidence, brilliance, stupidity, plaid, tortoises, unexpected rainstorms, his own pain. Not other people's pain, but sometimes the way they expressed it, but still not—dismissively. Never because they didn't _count_. That wasn't what laughter meant, for him, that he wasn't taking a thing seriously. Jason shouldn't have been angry.

Except. Harley told him to look for the _except_ whenever he told himself he shouldn't feel something.

This laughter wasn't meant to hurt but that didn't mean that it _didn't_. All his life, there'd been someone mocking him, looking down on him, telling him that the act of trying to rise above his worth was the most pathetic part of his pathetic existence, and he _hated_ it. That was what he had hated Jokester for, when he was Talon, before he started to believe there was a way out that wasn't coffin-shaped—for that, more than the way he would get in the way, aggravate the Owl and get one over on him so that Wayne took it out on Talon later, it had been the way the clown would _laugh,_ like he could see right through you and knew just how little you were worth.

He _had_ seen through him, it turned out, but he'd thought there was something worthwhile after all.

"M'sorry," said Jokester.

Still not serious, but contrite. _Sincere_. Oh, he still sounded like he was making fun, but Jason had learned to tell the difference. He believed that 'sorry.'

Because this was J, after all. J who'd been there when Jason had screamed himself out, who'd made hot chocolate in the face of insomnia, who'd thrown himself into battle for Jason's sake and, even more importantly, flung himself carelessly over the backs of sofas, stared at ceilings to give him privacy and spent hours, sometimes, kicking his heels and talking about nothing, keeping him from having to be alone with himself, not expecting him to be good company in exchange. Who'd over and over let Jason choose how much space he needed, without ever asking him to put it into words.

(Jason _liked_ words, liked talking, liked sassing and laughing and he always _had_ , and there had been days when the _silence_ of serving among the Owls strangled him worse than being a slave or a murderer. But that didn't mean the important ones came easy.)

A year, almost, he'd been with the Circus now. A year of that kind of patience, of the kind of trust that was _smiling_ when their baby girl crawled into the lap of a recently-reformed murderer to listen as her dad told endless meandering stories about Robin Hood.

(Will Scarlet had joined the Merry Men a week and a half before Christmas, after Jason took up the Red Hood name and went out with the Circus for the first time. There was a thing called subtle. Jason knew J could do it, because he'd seen him. He didn't really seem to bother much, though.)

Of the sensitivity that was steering Ella out of the room again, when Jason was stretched so thin and sharp he didn't trust himself not to cut anything that came too close.

Jason didn't understand how they knew, either of them. They guessed wrong sometimes, of course, about what he was thinking, what he needed—sometimes completely wrong, like when J had been so determined to show he trusted Jason not to hurt him that he'd started jumping out of corners trying to startle him, until Harley made him stop—but they were right so much more often, and…he wanted that. He could read by a shift in a person's eyes or muscles where they were likely to dodge or strike; he'd learned to watch for the telltale signs of most liars, and for the twitch or flinch that everybody gave, almost everybody, when you stumbled on the one thing they were most afraid you would do to them.

He could learn this, too, he was almost sure, if he could figure out the trick. How to know what people _needed._ When you should talk, or be quiet, give them space or a hug or—he used to be pretty good at guessing, with his mom. Pretty good. Not great, or anything.

Of course, she hadn't really been his mom, but he wasn't really Harley's kid, either.

(He wasn't a kid at all, not really; he'd barely been a kid anymore even when the Owl first took him, and he'd given up any claim on the protections kids were supposed to have the first time he cut a throat to spare himself pain. But with everything the clowns knew, it seemed they didn't realize that.)

It had been a year, almost, of that kind of structured kindness. He knew it wouldn't last. Couldn't last. They had so _many_ obligations; even if he stayed forever, once they were done rehabilitating him he'd stop being their current project. He _knew_ he only had their attention for as long as he was broken. But still. Still.

Part of him now thought moms ought to be blonde doctors, who smiled at you like you were the whole reason for smiling. And he hadn't had a father in half a lifetime, but he couldn't help thinking it would almost be cool to have one again. If it was someone who didn't think that role gave him ownership privileges.

"You're really upset," Jokester observed, pushing off the shingles again and coming forward the two and a half steps that brought him to the edge of the nearest outstretched wing. "What's the matter?"

Jason tried to shrug, but it only sort of worked; his shoulder didn't want to move out of ready posture even though he no longer felt threatened. His back was almost as stony as the one under his knee. "Ed gave me their final report on Rosen and Haywood earlier." J nodded, like he'd known that, and his expression didn't relax into understanding.

Dammit. "I don't know which one it is. I don't know which one I _want_ it to be. It's _stupid,_ why would it _matter._ " He ground his teeth, viciously—they grew back, whole and perfect, if they were knocked or pulled out, but if he chipped them the chip stayed as long as the tooth. How did that even work.

When Jokester spoke again, it was almost tentative. "JJ…are you afraid?"

Jason's shoulders managed to get even tenser with something like rage, focused equally on J and on himself.

Loathe his damaged and dangerous mind as he might, at least being indecently prone to killing had… _dignity_ , even if the way he'd gotten there was all slavery and puking blood. People _had_ to respect crazy once it reached a certain threat level, and _crazy_ fit right in with the Circus, even if his was the wrong kind. And flipping out over revelations about his mom, hey, his pride could survive that. Nobody should have to lose as much as he had.

(He knew there were people in the world worse off than he'd ever been and the knowledge sat sick and burning in his stomach and made him want to turn Talon into _his_ weapon, and kill and kill every bastard who thought it was okay to take things from people just because they _could_ —) He was broken and bloodstained and carrying guilt and shame enough to sink an ocean liner with the weight. All that was true, and he wouldn't argue against anyone who said it. He knew what he was.

But Jason Peter Todd was not _afraid._

"Cuz if you are…you know it's nothing to be ashamed of, right?"

Jason's head jerked up at that, taking in Jokester with his hand flat on the back of the wing, keeping a worried eye on him. "That's easy for you to say," he spat, and then sank his teeth into his tongue, not sure whether he was more mortified that he'd lashed out at someone he owed so much to, _again_ , or at how pathetically young he'd sounded, doing it.

J's face stretched into his wryest look. "Yeah," he admitted with a little chuckle. "I guess it is. Isn't it."

"People keep calling me brave," the clown confided, leaning in a little closer over the sweep of stone between them. "And I always want to say, _no, that's not right,_ because you've got to be _scared_ before bravery is even on the table."

Jason snorted, and looked away. No matter how much he owed to the fact that J was a sentimental ass, he didn't always have patience for it. Especially when it turned into arrogance like this.

"You don't believe me?" J asked. Lightly, unoffended by Jason's show of disgust, and Jason hated him for it, right then. He could reach out a hand and _shove_ , no art or skill to it at all, and knock the man off the roof to his death—he could say every horrible thing he could think of, digging into Jokester's vulnerable points like he never could have months ago, before he'd known him so well—he could turn on him with the knife in his boot and cut a scar to remember him by— _why did J make it so easy to hurt him?_

Because he wasn't afraid.

Fuck.

The clown's gloved hand brushed inward along the upper edge of the wing, toward Jason. "If you _are_ scared about talking to these ladies, that's fine. That's _good._ "

"Doesn't _feel_ good," Jason grumbled, ducking his chin and knowing he'd just given the Jokester exactly what he wanted.

"You're scared because it's personal," J pointed out, not gloating at all. "You care. Can't help being scared, when you care. I was scared to _death_ when I asked Harley to marry me."

Jason's head jerked up, and he stared at Jokester, trying to make out the shape of a lie. "But you…"

"There's all kinds of fear," J shrugged. "You can talk to Jon about it, he gets all technical—'parently one of the things that's wrong with my head is a seriously atypical response to adrenaline—but popping the question was the scariest thing I've ever done. I just…I thought _what if she leaves because of this_ , and _what if she says yes and then regrets it,_ and I almost didn't ask. And that's what being scared _is_ , right?"

Jason nodded, uncertainly. It sounded…at least _similar_ to fear, and he had an odd floating-outside-his-body moment where he felt like someone trying to explain _blue_ to a member of an alien race that couldn't see color.

"But I did," J concluded, with a self-satisfied smirk. "One of my prouder achievements, if I may say."

Jason snorted. " _Proposing to your girlfriend?_ Good choice, I'll give you. Achievement, not so much."

He remembered the fireworks show J had put on that night over the city, rockets bursting from the top of every skyscraper almost before sunset had faded, to paint the night green and purple, red and white and gold. Jason and his mom had gone out into the street to get a better view. There'd been a whole lot of those ones that exploded into the outline of a heart. He wondered now what J would have done with all those fireworks, if Harley had turned him down.

"It was hard," J shrugged. "So I'm proud. Courage isn't…" He shrugged, again. "I don't get scared by normal things. You know that. It's nothing to be proud of when I risk my neck, cuz that's _easy._ It'd be like…a frog proud of swimming. I don't so much got a good strong bravery engine as I don't have any _brakes._ " His laugh rang out then, dampened by the fog, hilarity at his own ridiculous metaphors. And then he sobered, slightly, and turned to look at Jason head-on.

"But I do get it. Just because I don't panic, or freeze up, just because I've got a screw loose that makes me laugh in death's face, just because I act like I don't have the sense God gave a sparrow, doesn't mean I don't _understand_. Doesn't mean I don't _know_ the risks we take. That we're putting Ella's life in danger every day we go on being her parents, that every night we go out, one of us might not come back.

"That I could lose Harley, that I could lose _you…._ Don't think I don't realize."

And some point during this speech, Jason had stopped pretending to do anything but stare. And hell, he'd never really _not_ known J could be serious—there were certain kinds of battles that brought it out especially sharply, and if he hadn't noticed already, he would have when the clown had knocked out his earpiece and pinned him against a wall and whispered that he knew Jason was angry, even though he didn't know Talon was _Jason_ then—but it was very rare that the faint wrinkle of laughter was banished from his voice, no matter how completely serious he was being.

The last time Jason remembered hearing it, he'd been shackled to a table, wearing rags and his own blood, and being told that no matter what, Jokester and Harlequin would always come for him.

"And maybe that _doesn't_ scare me, the way it should," the clown-faced vigilante said, meeting his eyes frankly for a few seconds, and then having the decency to look away, over the city. "The way it would…somebody a little less crazy. But it gets to me, all the same. Sometimes, when I can't get it out of my head, it just about _kills_ me.

"And then I want to stop fighting and take everyone a million miles away, and hope nobody comes after us. Stop trying to be heroes, just be happy. But I keep going. Because it's _too late_ to run. Because I _can't_ pack up the whole city and move them all where he can't reach them. Because…courage is a choice."

J sighed, bit at his lower lip, eyes far away. "Because," he added, a wry kind of humor seeping back in, and his eyes cutting suddenly at Jason, "it's not my place to choose for anyone but me, no matter how much I want you safe."

The clown let out a long breath, then, and looked down, at his own feet and then past, down over the edge of the roof, the drop that meant almost nothing to Jason but would be hard for the Jokester to survive. (And he realized he'd already calculated the angles and force to catch his almost-father, not-quite-captain, if he fell.)

Looked up, when Jason didn't say anything, and smiled. "So then sometimes I think, maybe I'm kind of brave after all?"

Shrugged, self-deprecatingly awkward, and then wove forward around the stone wing, one hand on the statue for balance, so close to the edge that part of his shoe and half his body stuck out over the drop, and then he'd finished his loop and had a little more space to lean back into, tucked up against the gargoyle's shoulder, half a foot from Jason's knee.

"Moron," Jason said, through his teeth. " _Listen_ to what people tell you, sometime. Haven't you noticed you're the big hero around here?"

Jokester wrinkled his nose. "That's not…even if I was doing more than the rest of you, which I'm not, that's not the point. Courage isn't measured in whether you win, or who you save. Courage is about doing the things that are hard. Sometimes, courage is _breathing._ "

Jokester's face pulled, then, as Jason watched, the lines of it going tight around the pucker of scar and making the crow's-feet by his eyes look for maybe the first time like something other than a count of smiles smiled, and Jason thought about those scars. J never talked about the night he'd gotten them, or the recovery after, about what the acid had taken from him. Jason didn't know the first thing about who he'd been before Red Hood, if 'J' had been short for something besides Jokester once. Could only half guess what had given him the terrible strength to keep living in the face of that violation, that loss of who and what he'd been.

That was courage too, wasn't it, the way J had just described the word. Pain made things hard just as much as fear did—really, they weren't separate things; three years with the Owl's claws digging into your neck taught you that. _Living_ taught you that. Pain is scary and fear hurts.

And even if Jokester's brain was wonky enough that he didn't feel some kinds of fear, there was no way Jason would buy that he was immune to _pain._ (He'd broken Jokester's left tibia on his fourteenth birthday, and the guy might have kept moving better than he'd ever seen anyone besides himself manage on a broken leg, but he hadn't even tried to _hide_ how much he was hurting, glassy-bright eyes and teeth sinking hard into his scarlet-without-bleeding lower lip.)

A hand landed on the back of his neck, warm and dry. Gentle. "What you lived through," said J, "that you came out still fighting. That you _care_. You're one of the bravest people I've ever met."

Jason bit his tongue and didn't argue. They'd been so much better to him than he deserved, and trying to set the record straight when it was almost over anyway wasn't worth the aggravation. He thought instead about how weird it was, that he didn't feel threatened by a hand on the back of his neck even after all the times Owlman had grabbed him there.

"Uhm," said J, before the silence could get too uncomfortable. He smoothed the hand down Jason's back before lifting it away. "But you shouldn't get too worried about Sheila whatsit or Sharmin whoever, either. If you do decide to talk to her. No matter how good her reasons were for giving you up, she ought to be _honored_ to have a chance to be in your life. And remember, no matter what, you still have us."

Jason wasn't sure what he gave away, but there must have been some kind of surprise, or doubt, because J pulled his hand away and frowned. "What, you thought…? You're one of us. Even if you leave. We _love_ you, JJ. That's not gonna just _stop_."

Jason opened his mouth to say something scathing, or dismissive, or defensive, but (maybe because he hadn't quite decided what tack to take) what came out was, "Why?"

To be honest, it sounded more like ' _whhyyyyyy?'_ Half whine, half word, a long syllable dragging itself out of his throat as he tried to take it back.

Jokester stared at him for a split second, his hand moving like he wanted to reach out and grab Jason again but decided not to, twitched a little like he couldn't find any words that would fit out his mouth, and said, "Because!"

Jason was pretty sure he said something like "that's a stupid reason why are you so stupid all the time," but honestly he wasn't sure because his body had gone into full scale mutiny and decided that it wanted to cry. He was not letting that happen—it hadn't even come close to happening in years, not _real_ crying instead of just a few tears in response to pain or eye irritation, and he just regulated his breathing with everything he had.

"Mother of _adagio_ ," Jokester said, raking his hair back, and he was so emphatic about it he could almost pass it off as actual swearing, or at least actual blasphemy. "JJ. I don't…reasons. Okay. _Reasons_. I guess…you're really brave. You know? And you—you're so good with Ella. You _fit._ "

He paused, waiting. "You know? You understand what we're fighting for. What it means to be weak. And you don't see losing as a reason to give up. But you still _care_. And—and you're someone we can help, too. Someone we can be there for and not make things worse." Line of pain there, like maybe J, of all improbable people, had walked away from people he cared about, because he couldn't help them any other way.

Jason shook his head, gut rolling. "That's not enough." There had to be a couple hundred orphans in Gotham with those qualifications. Kids like he used to be who desperately needed somewhere to belong, somebody to take care of them. Actual _kids._

He could get by without the Circus. Not that he wanted to—and keeping ahead of Owlman without help, that would be hard, even if he got a long way out of town—but he could. He could pass for eighteen if he had to; he could fight almost any ten men at once; he could keep himself fed so long as he wasn't too choosy about legalities. "That's not a _reason_. If you want me because Owlman made me so tough I'm the most useful angry teen in town, _say that_."

Jokester made a strangled, keening little noise in his throat that sounded not unlike a man surprised by death, and had more pain in it than Jason had gotten from this man the last time he'd actually stabbed him. "We _don't_ , JJ. If you never come out in the field again, that'd be fine, okay? Or if you want to keep fighting, but without us. Or." For a second J floundered. "Obligation is a terrible reason to do the kind of things we do. You gotta want it."

He stopped, like he was ready and waiting for Jason to announce his disinclination to guard his back ever again.

"No," Jason said, with only a little difficulty forming the words. "No, that's not—I _like_ working with you guys. I just." What? Wanted to know he was _wanted?_ For _himself?_ How childish was that, how selfish, for someone like him to be splitting hairs over why people were willing to give him the chance to pay off some of what he'd done.

It was just. He wasn't asking them to love him. But if J was going to say he did, Jason needed to _believe_ in it. Or not. He needed to know. "Forget it. It doesn't matter."

"No, shut up, of course it matters." J carded one hand through his purple hair, the crows-feet creasing deep. "It matters. Let me think. It's not that I mind talking about feelings, it's just…explaining them in words has never been my thing. They just _are_. I love you, okay, because you're…ours. And Jason. "

"Okay," said Jason.

J perked up. "Like I said, you're brave. It…look, I didn't save you, you know? In the warehouse. Nobody could, by then."

Jason's breath stuttered harder, and he dug his fingernails into the palms of his hands.

"It was up to you, Hood. _You_ had to decide. You had to save yourself. And you did. You, and Verne Ortiz, and hey, all of us, even. We were in a bad spot, I didn't have a plan to get out yet. 'Til you helped. And that's how I knew. You didn't pick a time when it was easy, or private, or there was something special to gain. I showed you a door, and you walked through it when _somebody else_ had something to _lose_."

Jason felt sick. "That's not—I didn't even do it _for her,_ I just—it was my last chance, like I said. You'd never have helped me if I'd done it." So that was it. It had all been based on a lie. A misunderstanding. On Jokester's pretty little self-delusions.

He had to end it now, while he had the nerve. Bent his mouth into a grin that was all teeth and hard edges. "I'd killed kids before, J. For even shittier reasons."

"Oh, _Jason,_ " said Jokester, the laugh in his voice all curled up on itself and covered in curved, tearing spikes; he sounded like he was in so much pain Jason closed his eyes tightly and thought hard about doing a forward roll off the gargoyle. He hadn't done this. Caused this. It was J's own fault for trying to see what wasn't there. "Did you think I didn't know that?"

Jason's breath stuttered. Now J said it, it shouldn't be a surprise that they'd known. Jokester's information network was amazing, after all. They _knew_ what he was, he'd made sure of that. "But you let me near Ella," he heard himself say.

"Well, _yeah._ " J seemed to find this objection stupid. "You're not crazy and you're not evil. Just because Owlman made you do awful things didn't mean you were going to keep doing them on your own."

He said that like it was obvious, like no one could question it, like it was the same as water being wet. Jason wasn't crazy, and he wasn't evil.

Jokester's smile, when he glanced at it, was wide and bright and looked like it hurt. "You really thought it was going to change things? Harley said that was why you kept being mean back at the beginning, to test us. I guess I didn't pass?"

"It's not _your_ fault," Jason snapped. "Don't be an asshole. I chickened out, is all."

"Is there anything else?"

"Any…thing?"

J shrugged. "I knew something was wrong, but I had no idea you thought we didn't want you, so who knows what else I'm missing?" Jason didn't say anything. He didn't know what to say. Harley was the one he usually confided in; she knew more of his dirty little secrets than anybody besides Wayne, though of course he'd kept some things back. Was that what J wanted?

The clown sighed. "After all this time," he said, and he had a point. Hadn't they proved themselves? Why was Jason such an asshole? "Harls was worried about being too pushy in case you felt like you were trapped, so I know we've been a little skittish 'bout claiming you, but really? Do you think we wouldn't fight for you? Do you think we wouldn't _die_ for you?"

"Don't," Jason snarled. "Don't you _dare._ Enough people are dead because of me."

"It's _not your fault_ what he made you do _._ Junior. No, look at me. _Look._ " J almost never gave orders, not real orders. Jason looked. J nodded, a little, holding his eyes. "That's not on you. Don't even think it."

"It's my _responsibility_."

"Yeah, okay. Carry whatever you gotta, son. But it's not your fault, and it doesn't make you bad. And I'm not gonna blame you, no matter what. I swear."

"What if I betrayed you?"

"What?"

"You heard me."

"I guess that'd depend on the circumstances," J said judiciously, after a second, and _good_ , he was taking the question seriously.

On the other hand… "How would it _depend?_ If I betray you, I'll have fucking _betrayed you!_ Are you going to tell me it would never happen? Are you going to tell me it'd be okay if it did?"

"I'm tellin' you it _depends_. Say maybe you have a girlfriend, and she gets taken hostage. You give up information that could hurt us in the future to keep her alive in the present. I think we'd probably all see our way to forgiving that."

"Yeah, well, what if somebody offers me a million bucks and a tropical mansion to lure you into a trap, and I take the deal, huh?"

"You won't do that."

"How do you know?"

"I trust you to make the right call. JJ. I _trust_ you. To look at the situation you're in and take stock and do everything possible to take the most possible care of everyone. Because you're brave."

Jason was going to cry. He was going to _burst_ into goddamn _tears_ like some kind of overwrought novel heroine, and drip all over the gargoyle's face in some kind of obscure overwrought gothic sentiment. "I'm not, though. I'm not. I don't deserve it, you shouldn't trust me, I'm a _coward_ , I _broke,_ J, he broke me, I'm a coward, I…"

J was talking, he realized, and leaning in over the garoyle's shoulder, crowding in near his space but not touching him. "Shh," he heard, "shoosh, shush, shh, s'okay, no, you're so brave, _Jason._ It's not your fault. Everybody breaks eventually, if nobody comes to save them. You were _twelve._ It's not your fault, you can't blame yourself, it's all on him, you're okay. You're brave, you're my hero, c'mon."

Their voices had been overlapping for a while, but at some point Jason had stopped talking and started listening. There were still no actual tears, but when he drew a gulping breath it dragged through his throat like a sob. "Stop it. I'm not a hero."

"'course you are, you're one of us aren't'cha?"

Somehow, the shameless way he said that made Jason laugh. Which was so much better than crying, and he felt the risk of the latter dropping the longer the laughter lasted. He maybe sounded a little hysterical, but when he stole a glance at Jokester he didn't look worried. He was smiling, a soft little thing Jason had seen trained on Ella and Harley in the past.

Holy shit. He really…they really….

"I'm scared," Jason admitted. J knew, obviously, anyway, and…maybe it would help. To say it. "That Sheila won't want me, or she will, or…." He shook his head. "I'm scared he'll get to me again, no matter what we do. I'm scared every time someone new finds out about Talon. I'm afraid of me. I'm afraid of _you_."

He didn't say this to hurt J, though he knew it would. Just in the spirit of honesty. The more things he said he was afraid of, the more came to him, and he needed to stop this soon or he was going to fall apart, just dissolve into a bunch of blobby, terrified, still-alive Talon-pieces.

"Yeah?" J asked. He sounded amused, but he always sounded amused. Jason couldn't tell what he thought. Even when he looked at his face, this time.

"Sorry."

"Nah, don't be. Hey, sometimes I scare _me_. No, really! You look around and go, look at that guy! He's blowing up a building! That's not funny! Somebody could get hurt! And then you're like, oh. That's me. I'm doing that."

"That's actually pretty funny," Jason pointed out, and Jokester laughed.

"C'mere?" He opened his arms, and Jason found it in himself to laugh, too, and half-crawled to the edge of the gargoyle's broad back to let J hug him.

"That's not how you scare me, though," he said, as arms closed around his back and his ear fell against J's neck just above the collarbone, in the wrong place to listen for his pulse. "Buildings blow up, _whatever_. You're scary because you offer to hug me and I _let you._ " He felt J's arms around him shift, like they were about to open, and jammed his forehead into the knob of J's clavicle. "Don't _stop_. Just. Trusting you is…it's hard not to, but it's also just _hard._ "

"I'm sorry." One hand patted his back.

"It's not your fault."

"All the same. How can I make it better?"

"You're already doing all of it, stupid."

"Well, tell me if you think of anything else. We love you."

Jason might have shaken a little at the reminder, but otherwise he held still. Hanging on like Ella after a nightmare. J smelled like the same laundry detergent they all used, and the eggs he'd made for breakfast, and like lavender-scented soap and triple-berry conditioner. Even through a layer of fabric, his shoulder was dumping heat into Jason's forehead, which on a chilly day like this was kind of nice. J's body temperature was always a little too low or a little too high—Jason was pretty sure part of his heat-regulating system had been burned out by whatever had turned him so white. Maybe he should ask about it, sometime. But only if he decided he _needed_ to know. Just because he was pretty sure now J would let him get away with just about anything, didn't mean it was okay to do whatever he wanted. He could wait until J decided to talk about it on his own, right?

He already knew what he wanted to answer J's question with. This was just trying to distract himself from deciding.

"There is something I've got to ask," he said, keeping his face pressed against fuschia cotton.

"Ask away."

"If I needed it," he whispered, "if the only way I could live was if _he_ didn't exist anymore, if sharing the world with him was making me crazy and I'd run out of ideas to fix that, he _had_ to die and I knew I couldn't do it myself. Would you kill him for me?"

Jokester's breath stopped against his cheek. "I," he said. "That." He breathed in again. Out. Not being a killer was important to J, Jason knew, though he'd never said as much in his hearing—J was a lot more sensitive than he sometimes seemed, about things like that, and what with Jason's history…well. But it _was_ important.

The question was important, too. Was the thing.

"Fortune knows I'd try everything else first, JJ," J said at last. "But yeah. Heaven help me, I would."

Jason swallowed, and burrowed into his, his _dad's_ shoulder. "Then I'll never ask you," he vowed, less than a whisper.

J's hand came up to cradle the back of his skull. And if there was one thing he was really grateful for, one thing about the Owl and his decisions that Jason could think _lucky_ about without irony, it was the way Wayne considered sentiment of every kind an unacceptable flaw. He'd done his best to make himself God in his Talon's eyes but it was all the obeisance and trembling none of the adoration; or almost none. Lord, but never Savior.

It would have been easy, is the thing. Jason knew enough about Stockholm Syndrome now to know how bad he got it even _without_ Wayne doing much to encourage it, how 'good' got to be defined by what his King willed, by whether Owlman was pleased, by whether he was successful and adequate and would avoid chastisement. What a _good_ little lapdog he made himself into, just to survive. It would have been _so_ easy to set him up to feel like he owed Wayne for every time he ended a punishment a little early, or called off a Courtier, or let him eat, or sleep, or have half an hour to heal. If the Owl had praised him, just now and then. Patted his head like the dog he'd been. Told him he was proud. That Jason was _worthy._

Twelve was old for a new Talon but young enough, and if Wayne had really tried he could have worked enough of that in while they were breaking him to build it up over the next couple of years into a sense of _actual fucking loyalty,_ that would have been so much harder to break than the submission and hollow pride that had been beaten into him instead.

So Jason was so, so lucky. That Wayne looked down on the gentler things enough that he didn't even think of it as worthwhile to teach his weapon to love him.

Because if he had done that, even if Jason _had_ still fought his way free of it and run away, still escaped to set himself against the Court, he couldn't have this _._ Couldn't let Jokester pull him into hugs or Harley squeeze his hand or even Ella curl against him, and feel the warmth flicker up in his chest. He wouldn't be able to believe in it. But Wayne left him this. His heart. Like a mugger declaring a keepsake too worthless to steal. Jason had never loved anyone who didn't deserve it.

"Do you believe in redemption?" he asked, whispered into the loud purple of Jokester's shirt; not because he didn't know the answer, but because he needed to hear it.

J huffed with laughter and wrapped his arms around Jason's back again, tight enough to hold him up if he let himself collapse, but not enough to pin him if he tried to get away. "Aw, _JJ_. More than I do in sin."

**Author's Note:**

> ...on Earth-3, everything is backwards. 
> 
> And this conversation is the core item on my 'J&Jason' relationship chart, it just has been sitting not-quite-finished in my computer for way too long, influencing other scenes but not appearing in public. It's shy. Say hello to the nice people, story!


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